Sofia Pride started swimming at only six months old. Her mother grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria and wanted her daughter to have the chance to learn a skill she never had. But what her mother couldn’t have known was just how much swimming would come to mean for Pride—or just how far Pride would go to protect other girls’ right to access the same opportunity.
In Maine, where Pride lives, the Maine Human Rights Act includes “gender identity” as a protected class, forcing girls to compete against transgender-identified males and share private spaces like locker rooms with males who identify as girls. This is despite Title IX protections for female-only sports and spaces and President Donald J. Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order signed last year.
It’s because of her athletic career that Pride is joining with the Maine Girl Dads, a grassroots organization launched by concerned fathers, and their petition to protect girls’ sports and spaces.
“Truly, if it wasn’t for swimming, I don’t think I’d be where I’m at,” she told IW Features.
Pride shared that before high school, she underwent five surgeries and struggled to recover from post-surgery complications.
“I had been bedbound for six weeks because I had major foot surgery,” she said. “I couldn’t walk. I had to relearn how to walk. It was the most painful experience in my life.”
For her freshman and sophomore years, she struggled to swim and bend her foot to kick with correct form, but the exercise in and of itself became the therapy she needed to recover.
“[Physical therapy] couldn’t even do what swimming did for me,” she said.
By her final year of high school, Pride said she went from being one of the worst swimmers on the team to placing in each of her events and serving as the team’s captain. She was weightlifting multiple times each week, swimming almost every day, and structuring her eating and sleeping around improving her sport. She also coached kids in swimming for her senior project.
“When I was super stressed out from school, I’d want to be in the pool because it’s the one time I wouldn’t be thinking about a test I had the next day,” she said. “It was my safe space.”
In high school, she was also active in politics, joining a local radio show each week to speak with figures such as President Donald J. Trump and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when Leavitt ran for congressional office. The Maine Girl Dads heard her voice and recruited her to serve as their spokeswoman.
However, Pride said that she didn’t grow up inculcated with politics. Her town was liberal, and she knew many of her classmates’ parents voted for the Democratic Party, but she said her own parents kept their politics private.
“I’d say eighth grade is when my mom started teaching me a little bit about politics,” she said. “She would just teach me about communism and how awful that was.”
“She’s from Bulgaria, and communism fell when she was [8 years old],” Pride continued. “She still remembers it… I think all of her grandparents basically never saw freedom. They were always under communism or communist rule.”
At school, Pride took every opportunity to learn more about civics and investigate different perspectives.
“I did a lot of learning myself,” she said. “Anytime I do a project at school, it was all my own sources that I found. I would always do the research.”
From her own perspective, Pride said she hopes to stand up for the next generation of athletes.
“I hope one day I can have my kids swim or in a sport just because I think it’s so healthy for you,” she said.
At a Maine Girl Dads event in November, she introduced conservative activist Riley Gaines to announce the number of signatures the initiative had collected for their ballot measure.
“She’s actually one of my inspirations from swimming,” Pride shared. “I would watch her when I was in freshman or sophomore year. I heard about her, and she made me want to be more involved in politics.”
“Introducing her was a dream come true,” she continued. “I made a post about it… It’s a photo of me and her and just some other pictures from the event and a caption just about how I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to introduce her. Nothing about my politics, nothing like that. And I got 400 hate comments from people from my high school.”
Because of the post, Pride said she was canceled in her hometown. Now, when she’s visiting her family, she said she still sees her former classmates who attacked her and gets “weird looks” when she’s in the store.
“I will have a conversation with these people,” she said. “They don’t even say anything to my face. They’re too scared to even mention it in person, which is the craziest part to me… I just wish them all the best.”
Pride said the double standard she faces is shocking. She explained that one of her former classmates does political advocacy for left-wing causes, and the same people who criticize Pride praise the left-wing activist’s accomplishments and career.
Ironically, Pride said she found out that one of the people encouraging hate comments against her had mocked a transgender-identifying referee for his identity.
Protecting female-only sports and spaces should not be controversial, she argued.
“I would say this is one of the most independent things to vote on,” she said.
Despite protecting female sports being an overwhelmingly popular issue in Maine, she said many people have been inculcated with misleading information about the Maine Girl Dads’ ballot measure, which officially received approval last month from the Maine Secretary of State to appear on the ballot in November. She explained that some people have heard the initiative would ban some people from sports, but in truth, the ballot measure would only ensure sports are divided into male, female, and co-ed categories, where everyone has a space to compete.
On the ground, however, Pride said that people are much more open-minded once they’ve heard the facts about the measure and what the Maine Girl Dads are advocating for. One reporter even changed his mind after trying to obtain a “gotcha” clip of the Maine Girl Dads.
Today, Pride is a freshman accounting student at the University of Maine at Orono, and she’s interning with Maine Senator Susan Collins. She’s the vice president of her school’s College Republicans and Turning Point USA clubs and balances her advocacy work alongside a love for business. But she shared that her ultimate dream is to be a mom.
“I think that’s the biggest reason I care about politics,” she said, explaining that she sees how much politics affects Gen Z and will impact her own children.
“It’s only been a little over 100 years since [women] have the right to vote,” she noted. “So why are we trying to take away our right to just having our own spaces?”
